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Old 12 Mar 2015
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Swingarm cracked: weld vs. brace

I'm riding a Kawasaki KLR 650 from 2005 from Vancouver to Tierra del Fuego.

About 10.000 km ago, I had a very hard crash which slightly damaged my swingarm. I didn't think too much of it, cause the damage appeared to be minor. A few days back, when inspecting my bike, the damage has gotten worse and cracks have started to form.





So needless to say, this needs to be fixed. The question is how. So far I have 2 different opinions:
  1. I met a German engineer who had an internship of a year working with metals, fixing exactly these types of problems, and he even has a degree in mechanical engineering. He thought that welding aluminium is very hard to do well, and if done incorrectly it could cause the swingarm to expand slightly on the one side, causing the backwheel to be misaligned. Therefore, he suggested that I would drill 4 holes, with thread (so I don't have to drill through the entire swingarm), in the aluminium, that would allow a 1cm thick steel brace to be appended to the swingarm.
  2. So I went to a mechanical worker here in Flores, Guatemala, to propose this solution. He disagrees because of 2 reasons: 1) drilling holes in the aluminium weakens it further (that was my initial thought and I discussed it with the German, but he didn't think it was a big problem). 2) Aluminium is quite brittle, and the drilled thread in it in combination with the constant vibration of the bike will cause the bolts to loosen en eventually fall out. He said he could totally weld another aluminium plate on top of it, cause he's done it before and it went well.

Both of the guys that I talked to seem to make sense and I'm not sure if I can trust this Guatemalan welder's capabilities to not cause the aluminium to expand. He seems quite confident and seems to have a lot of experience. But, you never know, especially this being Central America.

So I'm after some more opinions here, I'd love to hear what you guys would do in my place or if you maybe even have another solution that you think is better.

You might have noticed another problem from the pictures: the rear foot peg keeps bumping into the swingarm due to the suspension, so that needs to be bent outwards a bit. I don't think that requires any discussion, seems quite straightforward, but please let me know if you think otherwise.
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